Indigenous women and two-spirited people are leading a resurgence movement in iyiniwi-ministik, the People’s Island.They
draw on their traditional roles as protectors of the land and water to
inform their work in our communities, and root themselves in their
specific socio-political orders to counter colonialism and to revitalize
language and culture. Rather than being defined as a struggle against
patriarchal gender roles and the division of labour, Indigenous women
and two-spirited people’s work combats the imposition of colonial
barriers. The goal is not to attain gender equality, but rather to
restore Indigenous nationhood, which includes gender equality and
respect for gender fluidity.

As I write this I can hear Khelsilem Rivers (Skwxwú7mesh-Kwakwaka‘wakw),
a community organizer from Vancouver, pointing out that not all
Indigenous peoples have the same traditions, and that to avoid
perpetuating Pan-Indian stereotypes, we need to have honest discussions
about the diversity of our traditions. This is an important point
indeed, as not all Indigenous nations have the same traditions with
respect to the fluidity of gender roles. Romanticizing ourselves as a
collective unfortunately plays into “noble savage” stereotypes and does
damage in the long run. With so many Indigenous people disconnected from
their specific traditions, even so-called positive stereotypes are a
form of continuing erasure.

Even among nations with traditional
binary gender roles or hierarchical socio-political orders, there is
nothing that can accurately compare to the system of patriarchy imposed
by colonialism which mainstream Settler feminism aligns itself against.
Our internal struggles with traditional roles are not analogous to the
issues that Settler peoples have with their traditions, and so using
western liberal theory to deconstruct them is inherently incongruous.

Indigenous
traditions are not frozen in time any more than other people’s
traditions are. Our peoples have been trading more than goods for
thousands of years, passing along ceremonies, medicines, and ideas just
as easily as copper and fish. We are capable of change and have no
reason not to embrace it, as long as that change respects our reciprocal
obligations to one another and to the territories in which we live. We
do not need to look to western liberal notions of individual equality,
which so often ignore our communal existence and insist that land and
resources must be thought of as property. Instead, we can look to the
laws of our Indigenous neighbours if we need to review our traditions.
It is precisely this approach that is being taken up by many women and
two-spirited individuals in Indigenous communities as they pursue sexual
health, revitalization of language and culture, and renewal of
relationships with the land.

In a recent piece titled “Beyond Eve Ensler: What Should Organizing Against Gender Violence Look Like,”
Cherokee scholar Andrea Smith points out that, “the very category of
‘woman’ has served as a tool of violence… Colonialism has operated by
imposing a gender binary system in indigenous communities in order to
facilitate the imposition of colonial heteropatriarchy.” She goes on to
suggest that organizing around violence against trans and two-spirited
peoples is central to any struggle against gender violence. It is
important to understand that this struggle against gender violence is
central to Indigenous decolonization efforts, and cannot be separated
from that context.

The focus on trans and two-spirited people as central to decolonization is incredibly important. The groundbreaking work of the Native Youth Sexual Health Network
(NYSHN) epitomizes this approach. NYSHN works with “Indigenous peoples
across the United States and Canada to advocate for and build strong,
comprehensive, and culturally safe sexuality and reproductive health,
rights, and justice initiatives in their own communities.” NYSHN
provides pragmatic, honest, and clear information on sexual health, and
also engages in the renewal and revitalization of Indigenous traditions
related to all aspects of Indigenous health.

The barriers
currently facing Indigenous women and two-spirited people are severe and
informed by the history of colonialism. These barriers include the
refusal of the Canadian government to institute an inquiry into missing
and murdered Indigenous women, as well as the ongoing removal of
Indigenous children from their families in numbers that exceed those
taken by the residential school system and the sixties scoop combined. This
cataclysmic interference has taken a devastating toll on the health of
all of our people, but colonially imposed gender imbalances ensure that
Indigenous women and two-spirited people bear the brunt of the
consequences. The added marginalization experienced by two-spirited
people can sometimes be overlooked because the social outcomes for
Indigenous peoples are already, in general, very grim. To look at any of
this solely through the lens of Western feminism is to miss the larger picture.

The
imposition of colonial patriarchy has marginalized Indigenous women and
two-spirited people through Indian Act governance systems, and the
Indian Act itself. Until 1985, when amendments were made to the Indian
Act, an Indigenous woman who married a non-Indigenous man lost her legal
status as an Indian, and was unable to pass on status to her children.
In this way, generations of women and their children were denied their
identities, and even their homes. The impact of the loss of legal
identity is still being felt among Indigenous people through the
struggle to reconnect with their families and communities.

Until
very recently, two-spirited people were not recognized at all by
Canadian law or society. In the eyes of Canadians they do not exist—they
are concealed by the gender-essentialized structures of colonialism,
which have abolished their traditional places in Indigenous societies.
So effective were Church- and government-led erasures of our
two-spirited peoples, that reconstructing traditional two-spirited roles
and ceremonies is too often seen as peripheral to wider movements of
resurgence. Andrea Smith’s call to recenter our resurgence around
two-spirited people, and the work of groups like the NYSHN, reminds us
that we must decolonize even our priorities as Indigenous peoples.

Structural
erasures of Indigenous women and two-spirited people have had a role in
shaping their work as agents of resurgence. In a way, the overwhelming
masculinization of Indian Act governance systems has ensured that
Indigenous women and two-spirited people are less likely to be co-opted
by colonial powers, and less invested in maintaining those colonial
structures. Indigenous women have continued to exercise power through
traditional (and often unpaid) ways, maintaining traditional governance
structures in many communities. Two-spirited people have not necessarily
experienced the same retention of traditional roles, however, and much
work is needed to reconstruct and recenter our two-spirited relations
within our communities. Acknowledging and honouring two-spirited peoples
is vital to resisting resurgence based on gender essentialisms that
purport to “honour women” while simply recreating colonial patriarchal
gender roles with a bit of “Indian flair.”

The deliberate
exclusion of Indigenous women and two-spirited people from colonial
structures of power has meant that almost by default, the work of these
people is highly politicized, as it must happen outside those colonial
structures. This is not to say that Indigenous women and two-spirited
people have absolutely no access to colonial structures of power. In
recent years, there has been more inclusion of women, though not
necessarily of two-spirited people, in Indian Act governance systems.
Yet one has only to do a head count of male to female Indian Act Chiefs
to notice this recent inclusion shamefully mirrors the “inclusion” of
women in Canadian politics, which is tokenism at best.

Indigenous
women and two-spirited people experience all of the barriers faced by
Settler women and LGBT people, as well as the barriers experienced by
Indigenous people in a state defined by Settler colonialism. These
barriers cannot be sifted out and separated from one another. If you
understand this, it is much easier to comprehend the work being done by
Indigenous people like Leanne Simpson, Cindy Blackstock, Andrea Smith,
Christi Belcourt, Lee Maracle, Maria Campbell, Bridget Tolley, Jessica
Danforth, and so many others. All of these people root their work in
their Indigenous traditions, bringing forth traditional understandings
in acts of resurgence so potent, and so compelling, that I urge every
single person living in the People’s Island to become familiar with
them.

Indigenous women and two-spirited people must bear a heavy
burden, working to re-establish and revitalize Indigenous
socio-political orders, exercise sovereignty, and live resurgence:
indeed it can be very dangerous and draining work. It should not be
required at all. We should not have to work so hard to overcome barriers
imposed by people who were supposed to share these lands with us, as
guests and eventually as kin. Nonetheless, to exist as an Indigenous
woman or two-spirited person is an inherently political act. Simply
resisting our erasure is part of our work.

êkosi ♦

—

“Be
a Good Girl” (2006 woodcut print, courtesy of the Collection of
Aboriginal and Northern Affairs Canada) is a reflection on the gendered
work expectations and training of women in the 1950s. I have explored
this topic by looking at Indian residential schools, and the ways in
which young Native women were trained in an effort to transform them
into good working-class wives and workers. The Indian residential school
system had a half-day labour program for girls, which was abolished in
1952 out of concern that children were not receiving an education, but
were only serving the financial needs of the school. Residential schools
forbade Native children from speaking their languages or practicing
their culture in an attempt to mold them, for their “salvation,” into
productive members of white, capitalist society. The residential schools
were part of a dark history of racism and genocide in Canada and
continue to have negative effects. This sort of gendered work training,
however, was not reserved for the assimilation of Natives; training
schools like the Ontario Training School for Girls rehabilitated young
women with “loose” morals and other traits that were not tolerated in
the ’50s. Both white working class and Native girls attended these
training schools. This piece is about the conflicts, spiritual
paradoxes, and societal expectations of young women in the ’50s.

Tania
Willard, Secwepemc Nation, is an artist and designer based in
Vancouver. Through her art and design she hopes to communicate the
stories and voices we are unable to hear—the voices that are missing and
erased from our histories and realities.

“Indigenous Women and Two-Spirited People: Our Work isDecolonization” is from our spring 2014 issue, Women’s Work